Indian police say thousands of people stormed a high security prison and dragged out a rape suspect before beating him to death in the remote state of Nagaland.
Authorities say security personnel at the jail in Dimapur were overpowered as the mob broke into the facility late Thursday. A curfew has been imposed in the town.
The suspected rapist, a 35-year-old man, was dragged out and hauled naked through the streets. Police were later able to retrieve his body. He died of injuries suffered in the beating.
The man had been accused of raping a local woman last month.
Sexual violence against women in India came under the international spotlight after the gang rape of a 23-year-old girl on a moving bus in 2012, an attack so brutal that she died of her injuries.
Laws have since been tightened, but activists say society’s attitude toward women needs to change radically to combat sexual harassment and violence.
This week, Indian authorities blocked the screening of a BBC documentary that featured a controversial interview with one of the the men convicted in the brutal attack.
Saying that women who go out at night have only themselves to blame, Mukesh Singh - one of the six men who raped a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in December 2012 - told a BBC filmmaker that “a girl is far more responsible for rape than a man.”
Singh is in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail as he appeals his death sentence for the gang rape of Jyoti Singh on a bus she boarded after watching a film at night.
